SOMArts Cultural Center presents the one year anniversary of The News, a monthly offering of new and experimental performance works on Tuesday, February 5, 2013, 7:30 to 9pm. Held on the first Tuesday of each month, The News spotlights queer experiments, debut works, and works-in-progress by pre-selected solo artists, groups and troupes.

Later in the season even more hosting guest-curators join The News, including Malcom Hamilton and Gary Gregerson of Fembot and Friends on March 5, 2013, and Bernadette Bohan of The Box Factory on April 2, 2012.

PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES:

LaRece Egli grew up in a remote village Naknek, Alaska. Her experiences there have become the foundation of her life & work as a Survivalist Artist & Extreme Homemaker at her seasonal residence in Bellevue, Idaho. Her work emphases the emotional threads that connect all of us by recreating interactions with everyday objects. This focus has generated two successful businesses, LaRece Construction & Vago HTS. She has launched Performance Art campaigns including Twice The Guilt & eX Marks The Spot and is currently planning two new Performance pieces, Counter Culture which is based on the history of Home Economics & The Strait Story which is a series of functional strait jackets constructed from significant pieces of fabric from her life.

Peter Griggs (Burning Monk Collective) is a San Francisco transplant originally from Seattle who has been involved in theater since early childhood. Recent work includes collaborations with Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project (“Muse, Map, Walk”), with Boathouse Productions (“Lost and Found in the Mission,” which won best ensemble at 2008 SF Fringe Festival), with Dwayne Calizo at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory (“The Hazardous Waste Project: Sewing The Seeds of Love, Life, Lust, Lost and the Bomb”, and most recently with EmSpace Dance (“A Hand in Desire,” a dance-theater remix of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”).

He is founder of the Burning Monk Collective which has produced two of his original works: “Subrosa: Subliminal Joy…the EGO outted,” a tale about politics, shame, and the gay ego, and “Killer Queen,” which premiered at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory in early 2010. In 2011 another run of “Killer Queen” was produced as a site specific work in San Francisco and in Los Angeles, and received a GLAAD nomination for outstanding Los Angeles Theatre. Griggs is also a proud member of the House of Glitter; a multiracial drag collective in SF, and can be seen at local drag shows such as “U-PHORIA.”

Lambert hails from New York, New York where he drew inspiration from his time in musical theater and from some of the fiercest drag queens ever. He is now happy to call San Francisco his adopted home. In San Francisco he has performed at CounterPULSE in “Precious Drop” with the Jaara Dance Project and sung back up at The Rrazz Room for a wide range of acts including Justin Bond. You can see Lambert on select friday nights at “SOME THING” belting it out and making his drag mom David GLAMAMORE proud.

Peter Max Lawrence is an artist, filmmaker and “in[ve]stigator.” Born in Topeka, adopted soon thereafter and raised in Kansas City, Kansas, he currently lives and works in San Francisco. Over the course of his life and career Lawrence has created a large and diverse body of work, exploring a wide variety of approaches, media and themes. Lawrence’s visual art, performances and videos have been presented internationally in venues ranging from basement bathrooms to major museums.

Among some recent works of note are “The Battle of the Last Goodbye,” a massive installation composed of thousands of paintings, videos and sculptures situated among a collaborative, two-person SOMArts Commons Curatorial Residency exhibition AT WAR with artist and poet Truong Tran.

“QUEER in KANSAS” is his critically acclaimed autobiographical short film that screened at Frameline and several other international film festivals. The experimental short “de Young,” which was created while working as an artist-in-residence at the de Young Museum under sculptor Ian McDonald, was later featured on KQED’s Truly California. In addition he has also directed music videos for Carletta Sue Kay and Krystle Warren. Currently he is the curator for “The One” and “Art Thieves” and is developing a slew of collaborations with other musicians, artists and writers. View his work atwww.petermaxlawrence.com.

Michelle L. Morby was born in Buenos Aries, Argentina where she was adopted and soon moved to the United States. She is a multi-media based artist who uses photography, video, installation, food, sound and performance. The various subjects she explores in her work range from autobiographical themes, scientific theories, and mythology. She has performed and exhibited her work internationally from Argentina to Iceland. Most recently she created an endurance timed-based piece while participating in the Reykjavik Marathon. She currently lives in the Bay Area.

Xavier MTW, was born in France but has no accent and is a Bay Area transplant by way of Florida. MTW has a B.A. in Art History, University of Florida, 2008, and has a wide range of interests, including politics, music, current events and philosophy. Don’t be fooled by the alternative look; inside MTW is a total nerd.

MTW is a painter and multimedia artist, a sex worker (under the adult film moniker “Xander Spade”) and a performance artist (as “Mary Tyler Whore”). A little jaded perhaps, MTW is a nice guy who just wants someone for the occasional dinner, movie, sleepover combination, who is low-maintenance and like-minded.

Nico Peck’s chapbook “The Pyrrhaiad,” a “Queer Iliad” set in San Francisco, was published in 2012 by Trafficker Press. Peck’s blog queercity.org explores abject lost and found queer archives. Peck lives in San Francisco & teaches at San Jose State University. Visit Peck’s website at mjpeck.wordpress.com.

Grace Pool has been described as “thumping experimental pop” and as a sound that is “difficult to place in a specific genre or time.” It is the solo pop project of Peter Hernandez that utilizes field recordings, synthesized saxophone, live guitar, and vocals. His music synthesizes the sincerity of poetic prose and the disingenuity of contemporary electronic dance music through his two self-released CD-Rs, most recently 2012′s “Telos,” an investigation into music as product of romance and logic.

Aurora Switchblade started their undergraduate in theater but went on to complete a degree in anthropology followed by graduate studies in the same subject. They have also spent time studying abroad and teaching english in the West Bank of Palestine. This background strongly informs Switchblade’s art today.

Focusing on works aimed at redefining the genre of drag, Aurora presents the audience with equal parts emotion and laughter. Central to their objectives are the politics of oppression and the multifaceted ways oppression is played out in today’s political world. However, Aurora also has a lighter side and uses performance to entertain and provoke, embodying a hyperbole of camp, drag, and shade.

Aurora has appeared in a number of Peaches Christ productions. They have appeared at “Blow Pony,” both here in San Francisco and in Portland, at “The Monster Show” hosted by Cookie Dough, and most frequently at “SOME THING” at The Stud and “Trannyshack” at DNA Lounge. In 2011 they won the title of “Ms. SOME THING’s Got Talent” and in 2012 they were second runner-up at “Trannyshack Star Search.”

Kolmel WithLove is the creator of “The News.” Kolmel, curates, builds cameras and costumes, collaborates with other artists, makes films, and performs. Her films have screened in a variety of settings including Frameline Film Festival, MIX Mexico, Seattle Center of Contemporary Art, RAID Projects and in the book and DVD project “Strange Attractors.”

Kolmel has performed in venues including SOMArts Cultural Center, CounterPULSE, Highways Performance Space, The Velaslavasay Panorama Theatre, The Garage, various galleries, a few living rooms, two very nice leather bars and a piano lounge.